


Vague Definitions & Hazy Beginnings

by puptownfunk



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 09:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8051932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puptownfunk/pseuds/puptownfunk
Summary: It starts with cereal and Spiderman. Or - Ryan thinks it does.





	Vague Definitions & Hazy Beginnings

It starts with cereal and Spiderman. Or - Ryan thinks it does. He’s a fan of vague definitions and hazy beginnings but with Brendon, there are times where the uncertainty can be overwhelming.

And maybe it doesn’t start with cereal and Spiderman. Maybe it starts with Brent and band practice, the way Brendon smiled too eagerly and how it took him years to train his stomach so it would stop turning every time Brendon looked his way. 

Maybe it started with his lack of luck and tendency to push away everyone he’d ever loved. Everyone who ever loved him. 

(Ryan sometimes wonders if the two are interchangeable but quickly halts that train of thought. It’s depressing and fills all of him with an unshakeable guilt. And this isn’t supposed to be about him, anyway - for once, he thinks, he should stop making every _fucking_ thing about himself.)

The thing about being in a band is, when everything inevitably sours and you leave them like this girlfriend you thought you were so in love with until the creeping doubts made you question your own authenticity and purpose in life - the thing about this is, there’s not really communication. So you end up with these collections of memories - physical manifestations of your failures as a friend. He knows there’s a flip side to this, every time he thinks about the worn-out Beatles shirt he never got back, but he tries not to ponder on this. The memories are collecting bittersweet nostalgia and he’s collecting dust. 

So. It really starts at five in the morning when Ryan and Hobo are curled up on his couch, watching CNN and he hears a key turn in the lock. His first thought is that Shane somehow made a copy of his key and he’s going to have to move somewhere far, far away, get facial reconstruction surgery, and change his name. 

But instead, it’s Brendon, carrying a box of Fruit Loops and Bogart. Hobo jumps off the couch to bark and paw excitedly at her _new_ best friends, Brendon and Bogart. 

Ryan definitely does not think of her as a traitor. 

Brendon grins, dropping Bogart and the Fruit Loops to pick up Hobo and pet her. She licks him a little too generously. 

He stands up, feeling self-conscious and awkwardly aware of his messy hair and rumpled clothing. “Hi,” he says, his voice sounding rough and out of practice.

“Hi,” Brendon says, sounding as if the last two years of him pointedly ignoring and subtly shit talking Ryan never happened. Ryan stops himself before he can re-imagine a reality where it _didn’t_ , where he left to find himself but Brendon stuck with him. 

“I brought Fruit Loops,” Brendon tells him, sounding a little awkward now. Ryan notices, for the first time, how tired Brendon looks. 

In this other, perfect universe, Ryan wouldn’t be a coward and they would live together, having nightly Skype sessions when Brendon went on tour. 

“And Bogart,” Ryan notices aloud, crouching down to scratch her behind her hears. She doesn’t growl but she doesn’t lean into the touch like she used to. 

“Yeah,” Brendon smiles. “She missed Hobo.”

It doesn’t look that way, Ryan thinks. She’s mostly ignoring Hobo, who is pawing at her and whimpering a little too desperately. _Keep it in your pants_ , Ryan tries to tell her with his eyes. But she ignores him and keeps trying to nuzzle against Bogart.

Ryan doesn’t mention any of this to Brendon. Instead, he leads Brendon to the couch. “I can make us cereal, if you want,” he offers and he’s biting back jokes about fine cuisine and _the good old days_ of lives subsisted on Pop Tarts and cereal in their boxers. And he would stare a little, wanting Brendon despite everything.

Brendon closes his eyes and for a second, Ryan almost leans over and presses his fingers against Brendon’s temples. But he holds himself and lets his fingers burn with the space between them. 

“Yeah,” Brendon says finally, handing him the box of Fruit Loops. 

Ryan knows it’s pathetic of him to dig up Brendon’s favorite Looney Tunes spoon and the cracked bowls from his house warming, to measure Brendon’s milk and drop the Fruit Loops in one by one till it looks almost perfect, artistic but not deliberate. And, realistically, Ryan knows that his future with Brendon, friendship and everything in between, is not contingent on the arrangement of his cereal but, fuck, when Brendon leaves, Ryan wants to look back and think he did everything he could. That everything was different shades of perfect and this time around, he _tried_. 

When he comes back, Brendon is staring at the DVD menu of Spiderman on Ryan’s TV. “I’ve always wanted to see this,” he tells Ryan without looking at him.

“Yeah,” Ryan says lamely. He hands Brendon a bowl of cereal and presses play, before sitting down. The space between them is perfect and deliberate - enough that if Brendon wanted to, he could curl up against Ryan ( _like we used to_ and Ryan would be lying if every part of him wasn’t itching to touch Brendon) but not enough that Hobo or Bogart could worm their way in and move Brendon even further away from him.

And so they eat cereal and watch the movie. Brendon doesn’t keep up the running stream of commentary he used to, but he still laughs out loud and proclaims his undying love for Emma Stone only seven too many times.

When the movie finishes, they’re on the brink of touching and Ryan doesn’t want Brendon to leave, ever, but especially not now. “I have the next movie,” he tells Brendon.

Brendon smiles and it almost reaches his eyes. “Fancy new Ryan Ross with a strangely acquired taste for action movies. Whatever happened to the old reliable pretentious emo we all knew and loved?”

Ryan laughs despite himself. “I got over myself. And was a little obsessed with Andrew Garfield, so.”

“Andrew Garfield’s hot,” Brendon declares, his eyes a little too wide, and Ryan feels something in his stomach turn infinitely. 

“He’s British. You have to be at least moderately good-looking.” 

“Yeah, or otherwise they don’t give you your accent.”

They’ve been to England and they know it’s not true but Ryan grins and so does Brendon. They hold each other’s smiles until Brendon looks away, almost shyly. “Tomorrow,” he says quietly, and Ryan feels his heart sink at the thought of Brendon being taken away so quickly. It’s karma or something else terrible he’s so deserving of, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting. 

Brendon picks up Bogart, waving her paw at Ryan and Hobo. “Bye-bye,” he says in his Bogart voice. Hobo whimpers a little when Ryan closes the door and he picks her up, cuddling her against him. “I miss them too, buddy.” 

She looks at him pathetically and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her they’re not coming back. 

It’s not until later, when Ryan takes Hobo out for a walk, that he realizes Brendon never gave him back his key.

 

 

Brendon comes back the next day. And the day after. And for weeks after, until they’ve established a pattern of cereal and action movies that Ryan spends too many hours deliberating before he clicks “order” on Amazon. 

Bogart plays with Hobo, a little wary and distrusting, but it’s something. She leans a little more into Ryan’s touch every day. 

Brendon is different. He talks more during the movies and one day, he falls asleep against Ryan’s shoulder (Ryan hesitantly touched his hair before pulling away, it felt like cheating and he was falling too fast again) but Ryan isn’t able to close the gap between them. There’s progress, he thinks, deliberately-made progress brought on by horror movies and careful planning on his part, but it still feels tense and he’s always struck with surprise when Brendon comes back the next day.

One day, Brendon comes four hours late. Not that Ryan was counting - if he was, it would have been four hours and twenty seven minutes, but. He wasn’t. 

“Sorry,” he tells Ryan, dropping Bogart onto the couch. 

“What happened?” Ryan asks carefully. He’s always so careful now, careful not to push or force, careful to give Brendon space and time and everything else he needs. 

Brendon hesitates, before breaking into a story of a creative slump and losing track last night when he finally hit something.

Ryan listens, his eyes trained onto Brendon’s. He’s always listened to Brendon like this - hyperaware and excessively focused. He used to pretend to stare at his Sidekick just to hear Brendon whine for his attention. Maybe that was manipulative, but there was something about how Brendon needed all of Ryan concentrating completely on him that was so endearing. 

But he doesn’t play that game with Brendon anymore. He’s not sure if Brendon needs Ryan’s complete concentration anymore, and the thought stings.

When Brendon finishes, Ryan tells him he’s been in a creative slump too. “Writing-wise, anyway,” he says. And he’s always been so defensive and so aware he hasn’t been making music since Panic!, so worried that he’d peaked but maybe, for once, it’s time for him to be vulnerable. 

And there’s something in Brendon’s eyes - trust? - that encourages him to keep going. He’s been talking for two hours and he’s told Brendon almost everything he can without his voice breaking and Brendon tells him almost everything. They’re closer than they’ve been for a long time, Ryan notices that, and they only stop talking because Brendon’s stomach grumbles. Ryan gets up, more than a little reluctant to leave Brendon’s warmth, and when he gets back, Spiderman is playing. 

Brendon looks at him with a smile and takes the bowl of cereal. His leg presses against Ryan’s and Ryan can’t help the hope that’s overtaking him.

Ryan falls asleep like that, cereal bowl in hand. He dreams of flying around New York City with Brendon holding his hand.

When he wakes up, Brendon is gone. The TV is turned off, the DVD is put away, and both bowls are washed and put away.

Ryan can’t stop the flood of disappointment. Brendon could have at least been considerate enough to leave the dirty dishes, so Ryan would know what happened was _real_. 

 

 

Brendon doesn’t show up the next day. Or the day after that. After four days of this, Ryan is going crazy and against his better judgement and every part of him that knows he should just give Brendon space, he picks up Hobo and drives to Brendon’s house. 

It’s raining, so he cradles Hobo under his jacket as he waits for Brendon to answer the door. It occurs to him that Brendon had the key to his house, but Ryan never had they key to Brendon’s. 

That’s a metaphor, he thinks, but at this point, he jus doesn’t care. 

Brendon opens the door, finally. His hair is rumpled and he looks so tired. Ryan feels something in him give and it takes everything he has not to kiss Brendon.

Hobo jumps out of his arms to greet Bogart, who is wagging her tail with excitement. Brendon doesn’t share her enthusiasm and Ryan is left standing there, while Brendon stares him down.

“Hi,” Ryan says finally.

“Hi,” Brendon says, his voice breaking and, fuck giving Brendon space, fuck taking everything slowly, fuck all of it, Ryan can’t stop himself from wrapping his arms around Brendon. Brendon presses against him, half-sobbing and Ryan is _breaking_ now. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers over and over again into Brendon’s hair. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“You left the band but it felt like you left me,” Brendon manages to say, and Ryan would take it all back, he would tell Brendon about the uncertainty and the insecurity and feeling so lost, he would have kissed Brendon before he left and told him how he was half in love with him from the day they met, he would change everything if he could.

“I was-,” he starts but Brendon interrupts him.

“I was - I kept, I kept telling myself I _was_ in love with you but it’s not a was, it’s an am and I kept coming back, I was still so angry but I missed you so fucking much, you have no idea, I missed you, and -,”

Ryan kisses him. Brendon’s face is wet and the kiss is messy and desperate and their noses bump a little, but it’s still his favorite kiss. 

When they pull away, Ryan goes against everything he’s ever stood for and tells Brendon “I love you.”

 

 

“Testing, testing, one, two!” Brendon is grinning at Ryan through Skype.

Ryan laughs. “That’s not how it works, dummy.”

Brendon pouts and Ryan finally acquiesces. “You’re always right, Bren. I forgot that’s how it works.”

“That’s right,” Brendon says, sticking his tongue out.

When Brendon starts to yawn, Ryan makes Hobo and Bogart say good night. 

“I miss you,” he tells Brendon, feeling homesick for awful movies and late night talks and everything that encompasses the time he spends with Brendon. It’s never enough, he thinks.

“I’ll come home soon,” Brendon promises.


End file.
